26 Media and Movement

Contents

1. Objective

2. Learning Outcome

3. Introduction

4. News Media and Movements

5. New Media and Movements

6.1 New Media and Activism

6.2 Social Media and Revolutions

6.3 A democratic media?

8. Summary

1.   Objective

This module seeks to conceptualise media and movements as a field of enquiry, which has gathered much interest in the past few years, especially after the spread and use of social media for activism. It seeks to outline the political significance of the field, the broad set of research questions and the emergent strands of analysis within its scope.

2.   Learning Outcome

After reading this module, you will have an understanding of the following

–          Why study relationship of media and movements

–          News media and representation of movements

–          New media and activism

3.   Introduction

‘Media and movements’ is a rich area of research within social sciences, and chiefly concerned with the complex intersection of social movements and traditional news media (print and television). In recent times, social media platforms, such as social networking sites and blogs have also come into analytical focus, including their relationship with the traditional news media. Scholars engaged with this field are occupied centrally with the question of representation – who or which movements find representational space in old and/or new media, how and why? A related inquiry is on the impact of such media representations (or the absence of it) on the political trajectory of the movement/s, i.e. in eliciting the desired response from the public and polity. This module attempts to sketch the broad contours of the accumulated body of knowledge around these concerns.

The question of political impact bears within it an assumption, one that has almost acquired the standing of a modern truth. And that is on the tremendous social power of media today. It is recognised widely that news media bear heavily on body politic, especially in liberal democratic contexts, and this equation is therefore at the heart of media studies (Bennett & Entman 2001; Gurevitch, Coleman & Blumler 2009). In times when politics is increasingly played out in the media arena, especially the 24/7 news channels, scholars are concerned not only with what constitutes ‘politics’ and ‘news’ within media, but also the political implications of media’s power to define and proclaim. For example, a range of scholars have noted the ‘agenda setting’ functions of news media, i.e. how news media makes certain issues or problems more salient, through selection and ordering of news items, by privileging one voice over another, or in allocation of ‘the last word’ (Cook et al. 1983; McCombs 1981, O’Shaughnessy & Stadler 2005). This agenda setting has significant implications for not only the political class but also the larger public (Glasgow University Media Group 1982).

As forces of change, social movements intersect deeply with state and politics. Jenkins and Klandermans (1995: 1) say that “the nature and development of social movements cannot be understood without reference to the central role of the state… the state is simultaneously the target, sponsor and antagonist for social movements as well as the organiser of the political system and the arbiter of victory.” Consequently, a relation is also manifest between movements, politics and media. In other words, as a field of enquiry, media and movements is situated within the scope of media and politics. As such, the political trajectory of movements is now not untouched by the ubiquitous media. A Koopmans (2004) argues, a major part of the interaction between social movements and political authorities is no longer the direct, confrontation between them in physical spaces, but the indirect, mediated encounters in mass media. Even as we cannot discount the continuing importance of physical sites as representative spaces for movements, but even in Indian context, the recent history of the emergence and growth of ‘India against Corruption’ gives testimony to the increasing role of the media in shaping movement politics. A concurrent example is of the Arab revolutions of 2011, which were mobilized hugely through social media, and played out live via the international news media. Undoubtedly, there are a host of movements on the ground both in India and outside, which do not find representational space on the news or social media screens. How are their political journeys different? Do they not garner public or government attention? Are media the utmost agency of visibility and legitimacy? In times when both media and dissent are proliferating, such explorations become critical and serve to answer the moot question of why media and movements is an important field of enquiry today.

4. News Media and Movements

When we study media, we can focus on three inter-related aspects. We can study media production, i.e. the ways in which media is organized, including its ownership and operations, the nature of content or the ‘texts’ produced by them (such as news, films, serials etc) and media consumption, i.e. how do audiences read or make meanings of these texts. We don’t have to study all three strands at the same time, but even when we focus on only one, assumptions are made about the other two. For instance, if we make a qualitative analysis of a media text such as news, we would explain why it is as it is, with some account of its context of production, and might also supplement the analysis on how it may be received.

The study of media texts or the question of representation has got a considerable attention within media studies. By extension, representation of movements within media (here news media) has also claimed a space. This inquiry is made using a blend of methods within textual analysis. This includes a quantitative investigation of the differential representative focus, i.e. which movements find representation in the media and how much (and which did not) as also qualitative focus, i.e. how were the movements discursively framed by these media. Such an analysis can bring into view recent history or take a longitudinal span, tracing the change in representations over a period of time.

If we map the body of research on this question, some continuing threads of analysis come to the fore. For example, it has been noted time and again that movements often come into representative focus during specific moments, more often than not, during cycles of protest. Protest is not the only component of movements’ activity but an important one, in how it distinguishes movements from other routine political activities. Protest can be seen as ‘repeated public displays’ that are often at the heart of the contentious politics of movements (McAdam, Tarrow & Tilly 2004). How do media actually represent protests and movements? To begin with, media are selective in whose protests/movements they represent. McCarthy, McPhail & Smith (1996) point to a “selection bias” within media, in how they cover only a small number of public protests on the ground. However, even when news media do bring protests in focus, the framing may be done in ways that distort the movements’ own agendas. Frames can be seen as the preferred meanings that are conveyed by a mix of selection, emphasis or exclusion (Entman 1993, Gamson 1989, McLeod & Detenber 1999). For instance Smith, McCathy, McPhail and Augustyn (2001: 1398) underline that even when movements get media’s attention, the reporting is often done in ways that “neutralize or even undermine social movement agendas”. There is thus not only a “selection bias” but also a “description bias”: Selection bias involves media gatekeeper’s (e.g., editors’) choices of a very small number of protest events to report from a much larger pool of events which could be reported. That selection is part of the media’s agenda setting role. Description bias involves how a selected protest event is portrayed in a media story. Inherent in this term is the assumption that the media construct interpretations of protest events that differ from both the objectives of the protesters and interpretations of other observers. That media portrayal helps agenda-building processes (ibid: 1400-1401).

The description bias, which may not be obvious or explicit, may occur in various ways such as inadequate coverage of the actual issues that movements raise and more focus on dramatic nature of events, or coverage that is contrary to movements own perspective (Mcleod & Detenber 1999; Shoemaker 1984, Herman and Chomsky 1988). More importantly, this bias may be worse for movements that threaten the status quo. Gitlin (1977), who extensively studied television’s coverage of “opposition movements” outlines a three phase process of such coverage. In Phase I, movements come on media’s agenda due to some compelling, complex set of factors, even if “almost always in a distorted form, emphasizing style and means, not issues”. In Phase II, media polarizes the movements into “responsible and the irresponsible”, and in Phase III, media omit or censor the movement. Here only “the moderate, responsible, legitimate movements may go on getting covered. But the potentially dangerous do not. At crucial junctures defined by media elites, their general interest in stability and social cohesion overwhelms the journalistic code of coverage” (ibid: 796-98). In a similar vein, Song (2007) says that when it comes to ideologically sensitive issues, mainstream news media serve as an institution of social control by imposing frames that marginalise causes or movements that challenge the values of the mainstream society. The most common frame used by mainstream news media in this way is one of ‘law and order,’ which emphasises the violent and threatening nature of the movement under question (ibid: 77).

The analysis of how media represent movements has to be followed up with why do these representations exist in the ways they do and what are the implications? The most common explanations draw upon the political economy of the media, especially the corporatization of global media. For instance, Murdock (1990) points to how the domination and concentration of media industries by giant, multinational corporations is the biggest contradiction to the idea of the free press, especially at a time when diverse new social concerns and movements around ecological issues, women’s rights and racial equality, regional and religious identities etc, are emerging in a number of countries. This has led to a growing gap between the range of voices in society and that heard in the media. Herman & Chomsky (1988) also share such views and conceptualise the influence of the market on journalism as a ‘propaganda model’ that propagates the interests of the nexus between corporate and state power and marginalise the voices of the ‘others’. In a similar vein, Gamson and Wolfsfeld (1993) note, social movements and media have an asymmetrical relationship, such that movements need the media much more than the other way round.

The lack of interest is a political act and has an impact. According to Oliver & Maney (2000: 463-64) there is a triadic relation among politics, protest and news media, such that “news media are part of politics and part of protest, the three of them inextricably intertwined in ongoing events”. By representing protests, news media potentially lend the movements’ ‘visibility’, ‘resonance’ and ‘legitimacy’ (Koopmans 2004). By conveying information about protests, news media also help in diffusion of the protest or ‘protest waves’ (Andrews & Biggs 2006). This can alter the scale of publicity of the protest from a local to a national or even global sphere (D’Arcus 2006: 4). Oliver & Maney (2000: 470) say that through their coverage of protests, news media mediate political opportunities for movements and do so by shaping public opinion, including those of the political elites. This is because the ways in which news on protests are framed have therefore a deep impact on how these are interpreted and received in wider society. For instance, ‘at times, the news media have influenced through their overt advocacy of particular issues and at other times, influence comes through less overt decisions about what makes the news”. The argument on political opportunities is substantiated by Koopmans (2004) who highlights that ever since collective protest began to be mediated by the news camera in western democracies, authorities react to social movement activities if and as they are depicted in the mass media, and conversely movement activists become aware of political opportunities and constraints through the reactions (or non-reactions) that their actions provoke in the public sphere.

5. New Media and Movements

As private news media is being dissected the world over for its declining standards, the possibilities offered by the internet are being celebrated. The emergence of internet or the worldwide web has profoundly altered media ecologies across the world. The medium is often referred to as new media, in conjunction with other digital technologies, such as the mobile phone or the digital camera. Although new media is a contested term, but what goes largely uncontested is that as a communication medium, web does have some novel features when compared to the older, mass media. Firstly, unlike mass media, where the dissemination of information is one-sided and controlled by a small number of gatekeepers, this media allows ordinary people to both consume as well as produce information. Secondly, unlike mass media, web also allows users to connect to each other, and is therefore an interactive medium. The myriad platforms available on it, such as emails, websites, or social media, have all become spaces for expression, exchange, debate and discussion. This has facilitated the formation of virtual communities (Mitra 2005; Bakardjieva 2003). The web is also host to alternate journalism, of content produced by independent news sources, which seeks to counter dominant discourses of corporate led media (Atton 2003; Couldry & Curran 2003). Equally and importantly, this new media is now also used for activism (Porta, Mosca & Reiter 2006).

5.1 New Media and Activism

Since its early days, movement activists across the globe have found the web very useful to connect with each other, to advocate on specific causes, to plan and coordinate offline protests, and to also report on these protests. For all these activities, they have used tools such as emails, e-groups, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, photo and video sharing sites such as Flicker and Youtube (Bennett 2006; McCaughey & Ayers 2003). The web has enabled social movements to organise collective action both in online as well as offline spheres, at much lower cost than previously. This has been afforded through “e-tactics” such as petitions, letter writing campaigns, email campaigns, and boycotts (Earl & Kimport 2011).

The history of last two decades has many examples of movements which have used the web to embolden activism. One of the earliest, and perhaps most cited examples, is that of the Zapatistas movement by the Chiapas in Mexico, which used the medium to highlight injustices of the Mexican state and garner international support (Donk, Loader, Nixon, & Dieter 2004). As such, neoliberal globalisation has provided the structural context for many of these movements and their activism. This is not only because a whole range of contemporary movements now critique and contest the neoliberal model of economic globalisation, but also because they increasingly do so via the web, which is itself a product of globalisation and ironically also facilitates coordination between global economic actors. The Zapatista movement itself is seen as part of a larger movement, variously defined as “movement for global justice” and “globalisation from below” (Porta, Andretta, Mosca & Reiter 2006); “internetworked social movements” (Langman 2005); and “networked social movements” of the digital age (Castells 2012).

This larger anti globalisation movement, which comprises an assorted range of transnational activist organizations, including labour unions, environmentalists, feminists or pacifists emerged in late 90s and utilised the web to coordinate a series of protests in different cities of North America and Europe, against institutions such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), World Trade Organisation (WTO), G7 or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Juris 2005). One of the first and quite successful, trans-nationally coordinated protest was in Seattle in 1999 against the WTO, commonly referred to as the ‘Battle of Seattle’ (Kahn & Kellner 2004). At that point, an e-mail list called ‘Stop the WTO Round’ was significantly used by activists to plan these protests. In the following years, in addition to protests, the web was also used to organise the World Social Forum, a gathering of diverse movements, first in Brazil in 2002, and subsequently in other countries, in order to develop strategies for the continuing struggle against inequity and injustice (Seoane & Taddei 2002). The mediated coordination and connection that developed thereby between transnational activists, was in full display in a simultaneously organised anti war protest against United States led war on Iraq on February 15, 2003, wherein almost 20 million people participated across continents.

The anti globalisation movement got a new leash of energy in the shape of the Occupy Movement in 2012, which began in New York, but spread to many cities in Europe, America and Asia. The movement stood against stark inequalities caused by the capitalist systems. The Occupy protests were noted for their use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, platforms that emerged in middle of 2000s. The protests began when a group called Adbusters in New York city used the Twitter hashtag (#occupywallstreet) to mobilise support, and soon thousands of people joined, making Twitter the “technological platform most closely associated with OWS” (Penney & Dadas 2013: 2). 

Aside from Occupy protests, movements against neoliberal globalisation also shaped as anti austerity protests in many European nations such as Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain, particularly after the recession in 2008, where also social media role was documented. For instance, in Spain, an internet-based social movement platform called the¡Democracia real YA!, created by activists in 2001 was used to launch the indignados movement against increasing unemployment and austerity cuts and was used to coordinate a number of protest demonstrations across Spanish cities in 2011, attracting not only thousands of young supporters on the streets, but also the attention of the world media (Charnock, Purcell & Ribera-Fumaz 2011).

Social media is not only a tool for political expression and protest, but equally, and importantly, also a means to report on protests (Khamis & Vaughan 2011; Sreberny & Khiabani 2010). As such, alternate journalistic platforms are now used by activists to both publicise their protests and educate the larger public on the cause in question. For example, the protests against the WTO in Seattle gave birth to the Independent Media Center Network (Indymedia), a news service started by activists in order to counter what they saw as misinformation or lack of information by mainstream media on protests and movements. The network grew rapidly across many countries and by 2004 it had 142 sites in almost 53 countries (Garcelon 2006). Of course there are other social media platforms which are used to report on demonstrations (Poell & Borra 2012). For instance, Penney & Dadas (2013), who documented the use of Twitter in the Occupy Wall Street protests note how the platform was used to not only network but also to relay information, which helped “articulate a critique of power outside of the parameters of mainstream media.”

The web is not only being used for organising offline protests, but is itself a source of protest, such as whistle blowing or hacking. Making a case for hacking, Nissenbaum (2004) argues that it is essentially a dissident activity, directed against government and corporate power, but its conception has been altered to such an extent by these authorities, along with courts and popular media that “hackers are conceived as miscreants, vandals, criminals, and even terrorists”.

5.2 Social Media and Revolutions

Social media platforms have also been much talked about as tools of mobilisation in the many anti authoritarian or pro democracy protests in regimes of Asia and North Africa, in the last few years. Social media use was first documented in Iran in 2009 when popular uprisings known as ‘green movement’ erupted after the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-instated. Here young people used sites such as Facebook and Twitter to network and coordinate protests (Wojcieszak & Smith 2013). Similar uprisings were seen in a number of Arab countries in 2011, collectively referred to as the Arab Spring. The first was in Tunisia when a video that captured a man immolating himself went viral and became a catalyst for release of mass anger. Young and old collectively protested on the streets for days together, following which the President stepped down. Soon this revolutionary mood shifted to Egypt, where also popular uprisings led to the President submitting his resignation. In both Tunisia and Egypt, social media tools played a central role in shaping political debates and mobilising crowds on the streets (Howard & Hussain 2011; Khamis & Vaughan 2011). Arab Spring further snowballed to countries such as Yemen, Libya and Bahrain and social media use was documented in each of these, albeit differently. Many scholars have, over the years, documented growth in use of social media in these countries, which helped build a culture of resistance. Its use, they say is a response to a heavily censored news media, and continues to grow despite increasing regulation of web as well as arrests of blogger activists. Examining the roots of 2009 protests in Iran, Sreberny & Khiabany (2010) show that many years prior to the movement, the country saw massive growth in blogs which became a source of self expression for young people and women, while also facilitating debate and exchange between them. The politically active blogosphere in Egypt has also been documented. For instance, Egyptian scholar, Mona Eltahawy wrote prophetically in 2008 of how social media use by young people, especially of Facebook, had the potential to bring about radical political change in the country. She wrote:

The Middle East today, in 2008, is full of young people – the majority of the region’s population is below the age of 30. Paradoxically, their nations’ rulers are all old, having for years fought off any potential alternative leaders, creating a political vacuum into which those young people of the region are increasingly stepping. The Internet, blogs, and social networking sites now give voices to those most marginalized in the Middle East today – young people and women…. Generation Facebook might not be able to change their regimes today, but in building communities and support groups online, they are creating the much- needed middle ground that countries like Egypt desperately require… As Generation Facebook grows older and more assured in its ability to organize and unite, it will be confronting a potentially inexperienced leader in the form of Gamal Mubarak with potentially tragic and unforeseen consequences (ibid: 76-77).

As scholars note, there is thus an increasing intersection between offline and online activism. This dynamic relationship has been captured by Fahmi (2009: 89-90) as follows:

New social movements, with their do-it-yourself approach to information and communication technologies, have nevertheless mixed old and new technologies, merging virtual and physical spaces into “networks of alternative communication”… The spaces of resistance constituted within these hybrid physical and virtual worlds have created new geographies of protest. On the one hand, global networks’ geographic mobility, loose organizational models and access to communications have shifted their campaigns and resources to alternative virtual venues. On the other hand, as events are reported through websites, blogs and streams in a collaborative social process, a means of navigation is provided for street protestors… virtual and physical spaces are experienced almost as a single space of communication.

5.3 A Democratic Media?

The range of political potentials that the web affords, including debate and discussion, alternate journalism, whistle blowing and mobilisation of protests, has prompted many scholars to evaluate the web from the normative Habermasian ideal of public sphere. Many of them see it in proximity to the ideal, even if only partially realised, and thus significant for strengthening democratic practice (Downey & Fenton 2003). A number of scholars are however sceptical of the democratising potentials of the web, including its role on activism. They express their reservations on various grounds, such that how this media is not so much autonomous of state and market controls, that its use and participation may not be as alternate or counter hegemonic as is perceived, or how its potential for organising offline protests is over credited to the neglect of other factors. 

For instance, scholars point to increasing state controls on this space, through surveillance and censorship, especially after it is used for organising protests (Kahn & Kellner 2004; Davanna 2001). States now have much access to surveillance technology and in this respect, the idea of anonymity and freedom on social media or web at large, is inflated (Morozov 2011). In fact, social media is now a source of repression, as states use their technological powers to track down activists and later arrest and torture them (ibid.). Such surveillance and repression was seen for instance in Iran following the 2009 protests (Christensen 2011; Wojcieszak & Smith 2013). State controls on the web are visible not only in authoritarian regimes but also in democratically elected ones. For instance, censorship efforts in the United Kingdom escalated following the 2011 Arab Spring and the riots that took place in the country (Casilli & Tubaro 2012). This was manifest in a series of meetings that government officials in Britain had with representatives of social networking platforms in order to strategise ways by which social media use for protests could be prevented in the future. Similarly, Dick (2012) reports the result of a study in 12 democratically elected regimes, all of which showed a sharp increase in censorship. He writes, “The riots in the UK and the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement in the USA are good examples, not only of the increase in incidents of social media activism, but of the growth of Internet censorship and the kind of government reactions in established democracies” (ibid). Censorship was also a concern for participants in the New York Occupy protests (Penney & Dadas 2013). Many of them pointed to restrictions that Twitter placed on its service during the movement, which was possibly a politically motivated decision. Equally, the participants expressed worries about how using Twitter made them vulnerable to surveillance by the government. However, notwithstanding these pressures and concerns, participants expressed an unwillingness to leave the social platforms, as “they perceived the potential solutions to lie not in the avoidance of social media technologies but rather in their more careful and clever use” (ibid:15). What this indicates to is that despite government censorship and surveillance, activists are not always deterred off social media for organising protests, and this is seen, as mentioned before in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia or Iran. This can perhaps be explained by an observation by Wojcieszak & Smith (2013: 16), who say that in fact in such a climate, for the youth, “using the Internet is a political act in and of itself, a routine “rebellion” that, while not necessarily overtly challenging the regime, thumbs its nose at attempts to limit information access.”

The question however is whether and how using and participating in social media bears on democracy? A number of scholars raise this question and emphasise that in order to evaluate web or social media’s democratic potential, what must be seen is not only who or how many participate, but also the content of usage or the nature or quality of participation. At the outset, many scholars highlight the inadequacies in the celebratory narrative of growing participation, and by extension the egalitarian nature of this ‘public sphere’, by pointing to the persistent global inequalities in access to web or ‘digital divide’ as it is often termed, whether by gender, class, language, geography or other categories (Van Dijk 2005; Stern, Adams & Elsasser 2009). Others note that access to information on the internet does not always guarantee “increased political activity” or make citizens better informed (Papacharissi 2002). Further, increased political activity also does not mean it is more democratic or that it has an impact on the political process (ibid).

For instance, Wojcieszak & Smith (2013) question the assumptions about political use and potential of the web, including social media, and discuss this in the case of the green movement in Iran. In their study of the Iranian youth in 2011, two years after the revolution, they found that the young people were “more interested in using blogs, text messages, or Twitter to communicate about personal topics, new technologies and work-related affairs than politics.” They state: “talking politics via new media is not necessarily synonymous with accessing and discussing subversive content and that our sample is not uniformly opposed to the regime” (ibid: 15). On a similar note, a scholars scrutinise the nature of discourse on alternate journalism platforms, and suggest that these may not be as in-depth or all that different from mass media. For instance, the alternate social media accounts of demonstrations against G 20 meetings lacked diversity and had only a small group of voices (Poell & Borra 2012). And, while unlike the reporting of mainstream media, these accounts did portray the protesters in a favourable light, but very much like media reporting, these accounts were event based and dominated by narratives of violence that accompanied the protests, at the cost of highlighting the issue (ibid). Gerhards & Schäfer (2010) also arrive at a similar conclusion in their study that compared print media and internet communication and say that internet communication is not very different from the offline debate in the print media when it comes to “actors, evaluations and frames.” In fact, “internet com-munication seemed even more one-sided and less inclusive than print media communication in terms of its actor structure and issue evaluations (ibid: 155).

In addition to critiquing the quality of discourse and participation on the web, some scholars also resist the over estimation of the use or potential of social media for offline protests. Many of them emphasise that in the sweep of techno centric, celebratory narratives such as ‘Facebook Revolution’ or ‘Twitter revolution’, what is often missed is an analysis of socio-political context, which not only determine if and how protests erupt, but also their impact (Howard & Hussain 2011; Morozov 2011; Marmura 2008; Gladwell & Shirky 2011). Wolfsfeld, Segev & Sheafer (2013: 117) frame this point succinctly as thus:

The nature of the political environment affects both the ability of citizens to gain access to social media and on their motivation to take to the streets. In societies where people have less access to social media or where there is a great deal of censorship and control, it is more difficult for dissidents to exploit these new technologies. Even in places that do have easy and ample access to the new media, many citizens may not be angry enough to endure the considerable costs associated with collective action.

Scholars also highlight the importance of traditional political work that goes in mobilising protests, in concrete, real world settings, such as face to face meetings in comparison to mediated encounters (Porta, Andretta, Mosca & Reiter 2006). For instance, Sreberny & Khiabani (2010) express reservations on the ability of social media in organising protests and here cite the case of 2009 protests in Iran to say that “technologies in themselves are insufficient substitute for political strategy, goals and discourse.” and that “ultimately, the Twitter Revolution did not bring down the regime in Tehran.” The same argument is made by Morozov (2011) who substantiates this case with facts and highlights that most Twitter feeds during the protests in fact originated outside the country. Also the protests escalated at a time of when not was the Internet speed slow, but also there was an increase in censorship, detention of bloggers and tapping of phones (ibid). Wojcieszak & Smith (2013) make the same case through their study of Iranian youth in 2011, at a time when the Arab Spring was in full bloom, and highlight that despite the claims that Twitter played a central role in the uprisings, the fact is that Twitter was the least prevalent new media platform and as such 90 per cent of Iranian Twitter users live in Tehran. In conclusion of their paper, they perhaps echo the sentiment of many other scholars such as above who are sceptical of social media potentials and say, Our hope is that this study will encourage communication and political science scholars to look broadly for evidence on new media’s role in political organizing, and to contextualize this role in the larger fabric of social life. It is studies that attend to the nuanced way in which interpersonal, cultural, and structural factors constitute information flows that can best avoid the tendency to mythologize youth in undemocratic societies and the technologically deterministic narratives where social movements are synonymous with social media (ibid: 16).

Not only is the narrative of social media as mobilising tool for protest under critique, but also of it being a chief publicity medium of these protests. A number of scholars emphasise the fact that one cannot undermine the role of the mainstream media in framing and disseminating news of protests at a global scale. For instance, in the case of Iran, the global support to the movement was garnered when international television news media, such as Al Jazeera, picked up the story by highlighting videos of demonstrations and police action, which were made by protesters and put up on different online platforms (Rahimi 2011; Benski, Langman, Perugorría & Tejerina 2013). Social media has thus a relationship with the mainstream media (Bakardjieva 2012). This relationship is characterised by Mason (2012), who in reference to the 2011 Arab Spring protests, says that these movements were planned on Facebook, organized on Twitter, broadcast on YouTube, and amplified by Indymedia and Al Jazeera.

Given all these critiques on the political or democratic potentials of web and social media, does one conclude, as suggested by a few, that the notion of public sphere is not useful for characterising these spaces? Perhaps, if we take Habermas’s view, who is not very hopeful about how liberal democracies can benefit from the deliberations on the Internet (Habermas 1998). However, between the two sets of scholars, those who are optimistic and excited about political and democratic potentials of web and social media, and those who express scepticism on the same, some scholars take a more moderate view. Milioni (2009) for instance suggests that the idea of the public sphere is still a useful concept to qualify online spaces, provided one acknowledges, as Habermas does in his later theoretical accounts, the multiplicity and diversity of publics and public spheres, both hegemonic and counter hegemonic. This position articulates some optimism with caution. Similar argument is made by Warf & Grimes (1997: 259) who says that, “the Internet is neither inherently oppressive nor automatically emancipatory; it is a terrain of contested philosophies and politics… it does not necessarily serve either hegemonic or counter-hegemonic purposes; it can and does serve both.” It is this position that I larger concur with, and which informed my study of Facebook. To be sure, I was open to exploration of diverse voices and discourses on this media, but within the critical tradition, also keen to explore the question of dominance, i.e. whose discourse are dominant within this diversity.

8.  Summary

To sum up, we can say that given the heavily media saturated societies of our times the study of social movements today necessarily involves bringing in view their interaction with old and new media. News media and spaces such as blogs and social networking sites have emerged as critical spaces of representation, through which the goals and agendas of the movements can be publicised, and larger support galvanised. However, as you would have learnt from this module, both these spaces have certain conditions. Based on a host of factors, news media make choices about which movements find a representation and how. The news media coverage has a bearing on political visibility and opportunity. In contrast, while new media spaces seem more open and democratic, but issues such as access and surveillance remain. Also, the political impact it brings cannot be gauged without noting the interaction it has with older media, particularly television news media. This module would have helped you to be acquainted with the broad strands of debate on the relationship of media and movements.